. last week we are unable to cover last thursday's most important televised event. no, not the c.w.'s reboot of girl falls for cat faced fantasy monster tv series beauty and the beast which if i may say without ron perelman, what the [bleep], why even bother? but i'm talking about... we're talking about the vice presidential debate. that... well, that's a good title. actually, beauty and the beast could have worked as well.

if you really think about it. of course, pre-debate things looked very bad for the democrats a the first presidential showdown the democrat candidate, if you remember, missed it. in this debate, they're going to be relying on crazy uncle joe biden for damage control. good luck with that loose cannon. >> take a look at the facts. it cuts education by $450 billion. $2600 less in social security. 19 million people off medicaid. 200,000 children off early education. save $156 billion right off the bat. >> jon: who are you and what have you done with crazy joe biden? you're going to reach in your pants and out [bleep]. not only was biden not his lovable gaffe-tasti tic tour he

must have uppedded his prescription because he was fact-checking this debate in realtime. >> 7.4 million seniors are projected to lose the current medicare advantage coverage they have. that's a $3200 benefit cut. what we're saying... >> more people signed up it's a plan i put together with a prominent democrat senator >> there's not one democrat who endorses it >> we put it together with former clinton budget director >> who disavows you can cut taxes by 20% and still... >> not mathematically possible. ( cheers and applause ) >> jon: he was just throwing them all out there. sorry, paul. numberwise you've got your head up your ass. sorry, paul, one plus one equals bull [bleep]. i have an idea. who has eddie munster's air cut for brains? it's this guy. one of the great pleasures of

thursday night was watching how many different ways biden implied paul ryan was lying outactually saying the word "lie." >> not a single thing he said is accurate. >> that's a bizarre. i don't know what world... what are they talking about? >> i wish he would just be a little more candid. >> with all due respect that's a bunch of malarky. >> jon: with all due respect, that's a bunch of malarky. that's such a weird combination of gangster and old-timey irish colloquialism like fellows meets the quiet man. hey, with all due respec, that's a bunch of malarky. not for nothing. top of the morning to you. joe biden was all over the court sometimes playing the moderator,

sometimes taking the game right to the viewers at home >> did they just allow medicaid to bargain for the cost of drugs like medicaid can. that would save $156 bill right off the bat >> it would deny seniors choices. >> they are not denied... look, folks, all you seniors out there, have you been denied choices? >> jon: first of all, how did he know that i was a senior? second of all, i love that. come on, seniors, look, i'm one of you. look at me. i'm falling apart over here. who are you going to believe the guy who only has hair today because of one very unhappy alpaca? i mean, come on. come on. otherwise they didn't take his hair from the side of the alpaca. i won't quibble. we all remember what happened when the ghost of barack obama debated mitt romney.

>> what was he doing tonight? he went in there disarm. he was like an hour-and-a-half i think i can get through this thing. where was obama tonight sniem reb they admitted to the... all agreed to believe their eyes and ears. so vice presidential debate. fox? your move >> laughing off the problems the way joe biden did, people were offended by that. >> laughing in a hostile, aggressionive, scornful way >> raddatz was playing with the biden team >> the moderator's action or inaction... >> him smirking and smiling rude, condescending, mean at times. wondered, you know, if he had some burbon before he went out there >> reminded me of a musk ox running across the tundra with the moderator under foot. sniem a musk ox across the tundra? settle down, eskimo annie

oakley. enough with the mutual of omaha. look, we get it. you live in alaska. when you live in alaska in a town with roads and a wal-mart and two star bucks and your own plane and television station in your house, it's not [bleep] of the wild over there. my guess is you've never seen a musk ox running across the tundra. yet at fox the response to biden's strong showing was delegitimizing every aspect of that showing in the moderator to biden's demeanor which they claimed was offensive to one critical voting group >> thought it was totally over the top disrespectful. speaking as a woman >> i think it was a huge turn-off especially with women >> say you're in your 60s, you're thinking you'd like to date again, if you want to know exactly how to turn off a woman, watch that debate last night and follow biden's lead.

>> jon: yeah, fellows if you're going a-courting and you want to turn off a woman, act like biden. of course if you're looking to keep women alive and healthy, you might want to focus more on what he was saying, vis-a-vis health insurance and medicare not the politeness doesn't count. no, politeness counts. politeness counts a great deal because when a lady arrives via court order at the doctor for her mandatory transvaginal ultrasound, she wants to be treated like a lady. good day, madam. may i get the door for you? nears how desperate fox was to spin this debate. they called in a doctor for assistance >> i did not evaluate joe biden.

but if someone said to me, listen, we want you to do what's really required to know what happened there, you have to put dementia on the differential diagnosis. >> jon: yes, yes, that rare form of dementia where you remember too much. by the way, this knuckle head, keith ablow, is on fox's medical a-team. little fact their b-team is is a chimp with a screwdriver. to sum up fox's post debate coverage, joe biden was an angry demented abusive drunk old crazy person who mopped the floor with our guy. we'll be right

( cheers and applause ) >> jon: welcome back. we're talking about last week's vice presidential debate. there was something very unusual about that debate. had to do with the moderator martha raddatz >> wasn't this a massive intelligence failure, vice president biden? you have refused again to offer specifics on how you pay for that 20% across-the-board tax cut >> not a single thing he said is accurate. first of all... >> be specific. that's another question. how do you do that? military follows orders. i mean, trust me, there are

people who are concerned about pulling out. do you actually have the specifics or are you still working on it and that's why you won't tell voters? >> jon: i don't know what it was but it was the language of journalism being spoken on modern television. i couldn't believe it. martha raddatz! watching her moderate that debate with... oh, my god, editorial... like going to amish country and seeing them making beautiful chairs by hand. you're like i thought this craft had been completely forgotten. why can't every chair be made like this? especially after the previous debate when jim lehrer apparently felt his job was to simply establish that the stage had more than one person on it

>> do you see a major difference between the two of you on social security? do you believe there's a fundamental difference between the two of you as to how you view the mission of the federal government? what are the differences between the two of you? >> jon: let me ask you this. do you even see two people? because i see two people. i don't want to intrude, but obviously there looks like, i don't know, two. i don't know. i don't know. how good a job did martha raddatz do? both presidential campaigns have already launched pre-emptive strikes on the next debate moderator >> the campaigns have asked the commission to check with candy crowley to say do you get the facts? we think there should be a very limited role, very few follow-ups, traffic cops >> jon: or traffic cone or the paint on the road. i guess what we're saying is you don't have to be there, candy.

don't worry about it. just don't point [bleep] it out to either one of us. i wasn't the only hearing dream weaver whenever martha raddatz spoke >> martha raddatz did superbly an excellent excellent job today keeping both of these candidates in place, asking first-rate questions >> she was commanding. she followed up when she needed to. >> jon: i mean, we all really can't believe what she did. i mean really made us look like [bleep]. really [bleep]. with that whole journalism thing. any-who, we now turn back to our regularly scheduled show, rogue partisans killing time with tweets and other gimmicky crafts. >> joe biden was having an absolute meltdown in terms of his face movements >> ryan was coming across as robotic >> i'm seeing spikes now on thing like rude

>> twitter was afire after the debate last night. >> we saw the congressman drinking a lot of water. biden on the other hand was not so thirsty. >> what is this on paul ryan's face? >> what you're seeing are 491 different points on his face that are measuring different muscle movement. >> jon: just quit. cnn didn't just talk to a guy with a 3-d model of paul ryan's face. they talked for five minutes with a guy with a 3-d model of paul ryan's face. the first step in understanding someone's face is obscuring it entirely with computer graphics. really sums up cnn's approach to almost every story. sure, paul ryan looks annoyed. but how can you tell? you're probably only processing 410 of his facial data points. now i get what he's feeling.

but of course as we learned from the pundits, what do we have to go on? other than the face? >> if you read the transcript, you might well conclude that the vice president had a very strong debate. >> if you heard it on radio, biden won. if you watched it on television, he lost. >> if you want to see who wins a debate and who doesn't, turn off the sound and and watch them >> jon: really? turn off the sound. do you mean a debate or the price is right show case showdown? actually, howard dean is right. some things are better when you watch them with the sound off. we'll be right d

( cheers and applause ) >> jon: welcome back. my guest tonight is a best-selling author of the harry potter series of books. her new novel is called the casual vacancy. please welcome to the program once again j.k. rowling. ( cheers and applause ) thank you for being here

>> thank you very much. jon: first, you are so electric. you just blew up half of our studio grid. the book is called the casual vacancy. let me congratulate you on something that i think is one of the most difficult things for an artist and author to do and accomplish is to create something of great success and then let it be and create something else and put it out boldly >> thank you jon: that is not an easy thinged to do. i congratulate you for it. >> thank you. ( cheers and applause ) you know, it's funny because a lot of people say this is very brave. but i'm not sure it felt very brave. the brave thing honestly was working on something seven years with no hope of getting it published. i look back at those days and think, well, i was brave then

because i showed a lot of self belief really >> jon: absolutely. what was it in yourself belief that allowed you to sustain that? >> god only knows because really i look back and i think, you know, obviously it was hours, months, years literally. i really believed in the story. >> jon: i'm going to make a connection here on this book, the casual vacancy. there is a social aspect to this book that i think is informed by those early years of struggle. it feels like the thread of which goes through this narrative >> definitely. it's not an autobiography or a memoir. but i couldn't have written this book if i hadn't had a few years where i had been really as poor as it's possible to go in the u.k. without being homeless. i mean i had friends who helped me but no friends or family who were in a position to give me a house. we were on welfare is what you

would call welfare. i would call it benefits for a couple years >> jon: in this country, we call it to make it as diminishing as possible. we don't call it benefits. we like you to feel as bad as you can >> i have to say that exists in my country also. >> jon: it does at the time when i was living on benefits, people on benefits were being pretty severely... >> jon: aren't you a perfect example of a good investment from the government? has the government ever gotten more back from an investment than from you? ( cheers and applause ) >> i would think, yes. absolutely. for which i was grateful and still am. i received a subsist really from the government for a relatively short period in my life. i pay a lot of tax. i feel one of the reasons i stay and pay, why i'm not based in monaco, is i feel i owe... i

truly do feel that. i think my country helped me. there are places in the world where i would have starved >> jon: tell me again the name of that country... >> monoco is nice this time of year. belize is a good one >> jon: it's very interesting because in this, first of all, it is for americans they would probably understand there's a david lynch like quality to this. it's sort of very suburban... >> it's partly very suburban, yes. >> jon: but the underpinnings of the town are somewhat more darkly... >> i would agree, yes. it's a small english town. very pretty. it's not based on a real place. but it is the kind of place that i know well. i grew up in a town that is is not geographically exactly where this town is but it's not dissimilar in feeling. you've to translate for me. it is what we would call a

council estate >> jon: we would call that a house with an elevator for your car. >> so the town really doesn't want responsibility for... >> jon: oh,' project. that's where people of less means would live >> now we understand jon: we would call it the projects >> it would be the equivalent of the projects, right. and the town has political jurisdiction over this area and really doesn't want it. they see them as a drain and so on and so forth. that is the starting point of the novel. >> jon: if i may and i just want to give it away very quickly, it ends... >> dumbledorf comes back. ( cheers and applause ) >> jon: you have five minutes. we're going to talk more with j.k. rowling. casual vacancy is on the book shelves now. j.k. rowling. ( cheers and applause )

( cheers and applause ) >> jon: everybody, that's our show. listen to this. on the web part of my interview with j.o., we were talking about red and blue states and when that first started. i was like i think it used to be that the blue states were conservative and the red liberal. we went on the internet. it says 2000 tim russert did it and it stuck. it went back and forth until 2000. god bless the internet because without it we'd be walking around like this. join us tomorrow night at 11:00. here it is your moment of zen >> how old are you? i forget. i looked at my certificate recently and i said why less a